April 12, 2013

It was released for streaming — watch it here — at the same time that it opened in theaters. We watched last night. It will be quite fun for you, I think, if you've seen the movie "The Shining" — even if you're not obsessed with the movie — if you're interested in the way a work of art can draw people in and open up the doors of perception. With the revered genius director Kubrick cramming visual details in every shot, a viewer's mind can run wild with theories. The viewers' response to the movie parallels the Jack Nicholson character's response to the hotel. How crazy are these people? What do those cans of Calumet Baking Powder really mean?

Was Kubrick deliberately nudging you to think that the movie is really about the genocide of the Native Americans? Start looking for the other clues. It's amazing. It's a maze. You could get lost in there.

Was Kubrick trying to drive Stephen King crazy, like by making Jack's Volkswagen Beetle yellow instead of red and then later showing a crushed red Beetle under that semi in the snow?

Kubrick does these dissolves between scenes that have some interesting superimposed images — liked the peaked hotel roof and the ladder in the lobby — and the movie has several instances of characters walking backward — Shelley Duvall retreating up the stairs and swinging a baseball bat at Jack and the little boy retracing his steps in the snow to escape — and there's the backwards writing — "redrum" — so maybe Kubrick would like us to project the movie backwards and forwards simultaneously on one screen? Think what you could learn! All the secrets!

Well, I learned that Kubrick likes symmetry and puts things smack in the middle of the screen, which increases the likelihood of interesting combinations if you project backwards over forwards, but these people who obsess about the movie think Kubrick was trying to say something important. And what a coincidence! The message is about that person's central obsession — the slaughter of the Indians, the Holocaust, sex...

38 comments:

...one theory is that Stanley Kubrick did not make this movie as an adaptation of a Stephen King novel, he made it to let everyone know his part in the faked moon landing footage. Oh boy. One of the pieces of evidence provided is a door hanger that says "ROOM No 237". Please don't fool yourself into thinking that this means the hanger identifies Room Number 237. Oh no. Can't you see it? You can rearrange the capital letters to spell "MOON!" (they don't explain what the leftover R indicates. My theory is that if you add the "R" in the middle, you get "MORON" which is what you have to be if you buy into that nonsense)....I would have also liked to hear a sensible theory as to things like the carpet pattern switching when the ball rolls to Danny or why the other guy in the job interviews pants change. (hint: I doubt it involved faking a moon landing or Native American genocide).

The Shining is a great movie. One of the few scary movies I've watched that is actually scary and not just violent and gory. I'll leave the analysis of Kubrick's details and unconscious to those who can't enjoy a movie for what it is. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

"making Jack's Volkswagen Beetle yellow instead of red and then later showing a crushed red Beetle under that semi in the snow"

In movie parlance that's called continuity. That occurs when scenes are shot out of sequence.

Correctamundo. The little glitches that happen all the time in some good but mostly lesser quality movies. Things like: drinking from a glass that is almost empty and in the next sip...the glass is full again.

My husband is a pro at being able to spot these things. It is really amazing. We stop the show, go back a few frames and damn.... he is right!.

Big glitches like a different color car from the beginning of the movie to the end are not all that common, but it has happened. One time they were having a car chase and the bad guys somehow changed not only the color from a dark green to a dark green-blue....they changed the make of the car! In the "olden" days you might not have noticed because you didn't have rewind capabilities.

Sometimes it is best not to over analyze things, like playing the Beatles songs backwards. Fun....but stupid.

It's possible that Kubrick was referring to the fact that the hotel was supposed to have been built on an Indian burial ground (I think I recalled the manager telling Jack that at the beginning of the movie).

Pretty much every conspiracy theory that exists out there, from the idea that 911 is an inside,job to the JFK assassination to Paul Mccartneyis dead are all fakes. Every single one. But , there occur natural coincidences that seem to feed these stories (if you take the word of those believing the conspiracy that such events occur) to the point where it almost seems plausible.

Then again, a lot of these facts are fake facts. For,example the idea that there was no wreckage found in flight 93 on 9/11. Or the idea that no one saw the plane hit the pentagon on 9/11.The Truthers are adamant about their truth, which require such details to be true. But in nearly every case, they aren't.

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work an no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work an dno play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and not play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play maks Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no plaay makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play maks Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jaack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jac a dull boy. All work aad no play makes Jack a dull bot. All work and nop lay makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull goy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All worrk and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work ad no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dulll boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack s dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work an no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work an dno play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and not play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play maks Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no plaay makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play maks Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jaack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jac a dull boy. All work aad no play makes Jack a dull bot. All work and nop lay makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull goy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All worrk and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work ad no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dulll boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack s dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.

People were talking about the difficulty of following the floor plan of the hotel based on the individual scenes. Some people believe that Kubrick did this intentionally to cause psychological distress.

This is all well and good until the writer interviewed one of the set designers who called it all 'bullshiate' and said the shots were used because of the restrictions of the location and that Kubrick didn't give two hoots about setting up 'subconscious terror' with the viewers.

We watched that documentary. I was disappointed in that it gave so much screen time to the more wacka-doo theorists. On the other hand, I don't think Kubrick set out to make JUST a horror movie; like all great art, it works on multiple levels. I found the genocide/holocaust interpretations plausible (why the line about the "white man's burden"?) And the fact that Jack was reading a Playgirl with articles on molestation certainly supports the theory that the movie's a metaphor for child abuse.

The screenwriter was the novelist Diane Johnson. She gives a good interview about writing The Shining at http://www.terrortrap.com/interviews/dianejohnson. She and Kubrick discussed Freud as part of the process.

"In movie parlance that's called continuity. That occurs when scenes are shot out of sequence."

That possibility is, of course, acknowledged, but given that Kubrick was excruciatingly careful and a genius and knew people would look closely and see things, it is rejected. It's possible that he's making a joke about continuity, but not that it's a mere gaffe, these people think.

"Dante said...I saw an interview with her, and apparently she WAS terrified, of Kubrick! The way she described it, it sounded like a lot of emotional abuse going on."

Yeah, no kidding. I've seen many actors who otherwise love, and even worship Kubrick talk about his directing in such terms. Apparently he occasionally went beyond Method (as in acting) into madness (pun intended).

From an interview with Nicole Kidman:

"Kidman does admit, though, that Kubrick’s film was provocative, that he intended to imply that the pair’s real life marriage was on the frits (sic)."

“Stanley wanted to use our marriage as a supposed reality,” she says. “That was Stanley: He used the movie as provocation, pretending it was our sex life -- which we weren't oblivious to, but obviously it wasn't us. We both decided to dedicate ourselves to a great filmmaker and artist."

Seems like lots of directors can be that way. Anyone remember Winona Ryder's revelations about Coppola during Bram Stoker's Dracula?

Many moons ago I was waiting for a flight when I spied a shining silver colored paperback in the spinner rack and read on the cover "Soon to be a major motion picture from Stanley Kubrick".

Good enough for me and I must say, "The Shining" scared the living BeJesus out of me. (and I have gone on to read probably 85% of King's output).

Took a first date to the premier of the film and absolutely hated it. Its gotten no better even if I go back to view it as a Kubrick film. (those that have read the novel know there is very little of it in the film).

The treatment of Scatman Crothers' character, Dick Hallorann, was indefensible and ludicrous.

Frederic Raphael (who worked on Eyes Wide Shut) said that all of Kubrick's films are about the Holocaust. Which is to say, a Jewish kid who grew up in the 40s was sufficiently impressed by that event to spend a lifetime making movies in which evil exists under a very thin veneer of civilization and manners-- you may be wearing foppish wigs, Barry Lyndon, or military uniforms (Roman, French, American) or masks of refinement, Humbert, but underneath it you quickly reveal the ape killing another ape with a bone.

So without getting into too crazy stuff, I think it's entirely reasonable to see The Shining as another reflection of that viewpoint-- the hotel is another thin layer of civilization atop a bloody history (built on an Indian burial ground), and ultimately, it's another big social organization which absorbs the morals-free and makes use of their innate talent for killing. Hmm, a failed artist turned murderer? Who does that remind us of?

A guy named Rob Ager has an interesting site full of fascinating details. Some of it's whack, but some of it is clearly onto something-- there's no doubting that Danny's Teddy Bear has eyes that look exactly like the dials on the hotel elevator, for instance, or that Duvall is basically dressed to look like Goofy in much of the movie (which suggests it can't be an accident that she was cast after playing Olive Oyl in Popeye either).

Anyway, one interesting argument he makes is that the film is, to some extent, about childhood abuse being passed down generation to generation-- including perhaps sexual abuse, and that there's an identification between Danny and his Teddy Bear which that scene alludes to. He also suggests that that's why you can't make sense of the chronology in the film, which has multiple Mr. Gradys and so on-- to some extent that reflects the jumble in Jack's head, in which he's both abused child and abusing adult at the same time.

Is that right? Hell if I know. But it seems more directly onto something than the Indian genocide theory does.